Cyclone Alfred sights set on Australian coast after tracking Coral Sea. 7NEWS Queensland meteorologist Tony Auden investigates

After tracking through the Coral Sea for well over a week, tropical Cyclone Alfred now has his sights set on the Australian coast.

As of Monday morning, he’s the equivalent of a category 2 cyclone, sitting just over 400km off the Sunshine Coast.

Alfred is expected to continue moving southeast, away from the coast, and weaken to a category 1 system again until late Tuesday.

In this time, we can expect already large waves to build even further along southeast Queensland and northern New South Wales.

On Sunday, the Wide Bay waverider buoy recorded a series of rogue waves, the highest of which reached a phenomenal 16.92 metres!

The “significant wave height” or more of an average of all waves, was still pushing an impressive 4 metres at many locations as most beaches have been closed.

A Coastal Hazards Warning has been issued, with the threat of hazardous surf, abnormally high tides, and damaging surf leading to coastal erosion.

Longer term, Alfred is expected to re-intensify to category 2 as a “hybrid” cyclone, then barrel back towards the coast in the middle to later parts of the week.

A hybrid cyclone takes it’s energy from a mixture of warm ocean water (like a tropical cyclone) and from “baroclinic” influences in the upper atmosphere (like an East Coast Low).

They’re generally in the category 1 to 2 range, and have gale force winds on only one side. Tropical cyclones have gales around more than half of the system.

This hybrid nature also means that Alfred is unlikely to intensify up to severe category 3+ system again. So don’t expect to see scenes of palm trees flying in 200kph plus winds like we see in the tropics.

Technical aspects aside, Alfred is then likely to have a big impact on the coast later this week.

The current track map has that most likely on Thursday, centered on the Sunshine Coast, as a category 2 storm.

But forecast models vary from Wednesday night to Friday night, between K’gari and the Gold Coast, with anything from a tropical low, up to a strong category 2 system.

After landfall, the main concern turns to rain and flooding. We could see short bursts of heavy rain leading to potentially life-threatening flash flooding, and longer periods of rain leading to riverine flooding.

The severity of this river flooding will mainly depend on how long Alfred, and the rain, hang around. Flood watches have been issued right across the region.